


Great Men from Unhealthy Ground

by spacego



Series: Speaking of Love in Songs and Verse [3]
Category: Alexander (2004)
Genre: M/M, hyperbolic angsting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 04:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8042314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacego/pseuds/spacego
Summary: Leaves fall, turn the page. This is how broken self-important men cope with change.





	Great Men from Unhealthy Ground

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost, since I uploaded the wrong file before. I'm so mortified and so very sorry!  
> 

Compared to Babylon, the gardens in Carmania were modest, and the smaller ones were almost pitiful. But they could be the most beautiful that Hephaistion had ever seen after the barren wasteland called Gedrosia. It felt as though he could spend the rest of his life in this small enclosure, with the sea breeze just teasing along the edges of his senses.  
  
That same breeze ruffled the many parchments innocuously sitting on his lap. He had only managed to sneak out a few from under his pages' noses. Everyone had been telling him to take it easy, even Alexander. But what a beautiful contradiction that man was--saying one thing and meaning another, even if it weren't his intention.  
  
Hephaistion thought he could really stay here forever, taking it easy, given the chance. But it was clear that Alexander would not. Already restless, he would have them march again as soon as possible. To Susa this time, after a few stops here and there because Alexander wanted to greet his empire. To a new chapter of their lives.  
  
He looked down to his lap and sighed. The longer Alexander stayed in one place, the more his mind conjured up grandiose schemes. Hephaistion glared at list of things he needed to do, lying on top of his quartermaster's reports, on his lap. The list grew longer with each passing conversation, as though it had a life of its own.  
  
Perhaps he should avoid talking to the King for a while? It's not so difficult to do. The King had summoned all of his administrators from all corners of his kingdom to Carmania, getting briefings, meeting ambassadors, and setting down laws. Alexander didn't have an idle bone in his body, and his mind never seemed to rest. State matters stretching whole days, banquets lasting most nights. It's really not that hard to not see Alexander for days on end.  
  
Hephaistion then noticed at the very bottom of the pile: a parchment of a different shade than the rest, bearing the handwriting of one of Olympias's scribes. He sighed loudly. Of all the letters he managed to grab on his way out of his room, it should be hers. This family would be the death of him yet.  
  
Tilting his head to one side, he lolled against the edges of his chair. The sun above him wasn't so bright, he thought, it was dim compared to the one that had accompanied them across the desert. He thought he would never see a sun more brilliant than that anymore. He thought of Helios at his most vengeful, and fancied that perhaps he had found a demonstration of it across the dunes.  
  
He still had sunspots in his eyes, after all this time. Bright black patches obscured his vision, making all things a little unreal. They persisted, even with his eyes closed an his mind in relative quiet. Like now. He wondered idly if he could get rid of the spots ever.  
  
At least he no longer saw blood everywhere he looked.  
  
A rustling broke his reverie, though he oddly felt unthreatened. Nothing about the sound spelled danger to him, or perhaps he was just too tired to care. His dagger lay next to his ink and stylus. Looming above them all was a cup of boiled herbs that the physicians had forced upon him. It tasted like burning acid own his throat, as though it wished to strip away the sickness in his belly in one go.  
  
If he was really in danger, he thought, he could throw the concoction at his assailant. Surely they'd expire away immediately from the shock of its taste.  
  
The sound had become closer and his curiosity won out. Opening his eyes just enough to catch a glimpse, he saw someone examining the garden's meager offering of flowers.  
  
"Bagoas," he called out, as he tried to sit up in his own chair, his cloak had tangled around his legs and was now pulling him downwards.  
  
The boy--no, man now--looked up in surprise. Hephaistion's chair had been too well-hidden in the shade under one of the only two big trees in the small garden.  
  
******  
  
They ended up sharing the shade, Bagoas having located a low chair for himself. Hephaistion had wondered out loud why Bagoas didn't go to one of the bigger show gardens to get his flowers for the dancing later that night. He was told that all the best flowers had been picked clean throughout the day when Bagoas was still attending to Alexander.  
  
There was a sadness in that young face, clouding that lovely voice, that Hephaistion couldn't help but comment. "Even if you go without adornment, with your skill, you've nothing to be worried about," he said, trying to offer some encouraging words and saw that he had failed miserably in that small quest.  
  
"It's not that I d... It's my last dance, and then...." he struggled to explain himself. There were so many things he wanted to ask, wanted to say. "I want it to be..."  
  
"And it will be," Hephaistion said, oddly confident. "As it has always been." He could make whole armies fall on their swords with just the conviction in his voice.  
  
There's something else that Bagoas wanted to say, Hephaistion could tell. It was something unrelated to the dance competition, he knew. This past few nights, Alexander had been bothering him with his many ideas about the future, one that would affect everyone, including the person currently quietly fretting in front of him. So, Hephaistion mused, Bagoas had finally been told about some changes.  
  
The poor boy, Hephaistion thought. Alexander had the mind to set the boy free. To give him a rank and duties outside of Alexander's bedroom. But so soon, and so abruptly? Hephaistion had asked. All his short life Bagoas had always been a thing someone owned. His parents, for one. Darius. Then Alexander, who now, in his great magnanimity, thought to open the gilded cage's door for a bird who no longer remembered how to fly.  
  
Yet, the bird was still young, Hephaistion thought, studying the downturned face. Like all young things, there's still much time to learn, to excel.  
  
"And for what lies in the future," he concluded, "it will be alright, too. You'll see." Hephaistion wondered for whose benefit it was that he said these things. He looked down at the tasks he had at hand, the ones still waiting on his desk, and the ones that would surely come piling on.  
  
"Trust me," he said again. This time, he said it to himself as well. He wished he could trust himself the way he did Alexander. "Now, shall we go and find you your flowers?"  
  
It was amusing to see how alarmed Bagoas got. "But you're still convalescing!" A soft restraining hand came to encircle him, to stop him from rising. Deceptive strength pushing him into the cushions.  
  
"A stroll around the garden should do me good," he said as he struggled to rise up from his chair. Gedrosia had asked for, then took, more than what he was willing to give. "Else, we could raid the women's wing, they always have beautiful flowers in their vases."  
  
"Queen Roxana won't be happy."  
  
"She's only angry because Alexander forbids her from dancing anymore." Because she lost a child in India. At the heart of it, Alexander wanted her to rest and recuperate; Roxana wanted to seek solace in the trance that only could be found in dance. Yet none of them came close to speaking the truths of their hearts. Instead, they had chosen to skirt around it, covering up their fears for and of each other with half lies and absurd excuses. Perhaps it was about pride, mistrust, or other things involved in the love between a man and a woman that Hephaistion could not begin to fathom.  
  
Hephaistion had witnessed one such row. Somehow, the king and queen had ended up in front of Hephaistion's work table, arguing their side with logical excuses and unsound reasons by turn. The beleaguered general, who prided himself of never running away from anything in his life, had shamelessly absconded his position during the split second the royal eyes were not on him. There's always a first time for everything, he had justified to himself.  
  
"She was formidable competition," Bagoas remarked in awe, as he offered a steady hand, which was ignored. Hephaistion tucked his dagger against his waist, his writing things into a pouch that hung around his wrist. He wouldn't mind trading his dagger calluses for some stylus-inflicted ones. Perhaps then his middle finger would look less scrawny and more authoritative.  
  
"She still is," Hephaistion spoke absently, tucking his parchments under one arm. Had his parchments grown? They felt bulkier and heavier than before. He sighed noisily. It seemed like all he's been doing was sigh these days. Sometimes, peacetime could be so much more of bother than wartime.

 

* * *

  
  
Their scavenger hunt through the gardens had been a waste of time, as expected. But it gave the both of them time to shoot the breeze; idle talk had been an expensive commodity for too long now, and it's gratifying to speak about trifles surrounded by exuberant life forms.  
  
Long story short, the most suitable flowers had indeed existed away from the gardens. In Alexander's receiving room, no less.  
  
Though seeing now how he danced, Hephaistion stood by his belief that the eunuch needed not a single stem of flower to enhance perfection. He saw Alexander had come to the same conclusion, grinning like a madman, scooping up his eunuch into his arms with childish glee. Feeling vindicated, Hephaistion leaned back against a sturdy pillar.  
  
"You look happy. No. Not happy. You look content," a shadow fell across his light. Hephaistion looked up to see Craterus crowding into his space. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Alexander kissing Bagoas squarely on the lips, a slow protracted one, with the army cheering them on. "Your lover has made him his equal, I see. Your equal. Shouldn't you be throwing a tantrum right about now?"  
  
"Like a woman, you mean? You only wish." He snorted, and grabbed Craterus's cup from him.  
  
"Careful, that's uncut wine." There's a fleeting concern underneath the warning. Though it could just be an imagination. "Wouldn't want you to fall flat on your face so early in the night. Especially now that you don't have anyone to kiss it better." Though Craterus must admit that it was amusing to see the whole cup drain down that defiant Athenian throat in one go. Long and smooth.  
  
"I should be used to it by now." Hephaistion said, shoving the empty cup back into Craterus's hands. "Anyway. The troops seem to accept him." He remarked coldly, audibly above the excitable din and cat-calls in the background. "You should, too."  
  
"Not my soldiers. Those people didn't march with me," Craterus said, throwing a stink eye at drunk revelers surrounding the king and his eunuch.  
  
Hephaistion watched as Craterus stopped a servant beladen with wine. "He's more than proved himself in that godforsaken desert, Craterus. He saved lives," he said while accepting another cupful of wine from Craterus. Hephaistion marvelled at how civil the two of them were acting, he had to smile.  
  
"Not my life." Craterus was not going to give an inch.  
  
"Nevertheless," he renewed his venture once more, with a careless shrug, "doesn't change the fact that he did." Merit is merit, everywhere.  
  
"With water you found and supplies you laid down," the parry came with a lascivious wink, simply because he knew flattery wouldn't get him anywhere with Hephaistion.  
  
But Hephaistion's mind was already running away from him. He had enough pride, a dash of immodesty, to recognize the value of his own contributions. Though he had to wonder how useful he had been in the long run.  
  
He had indeed found them some barely adequate oases; most of them nothing but thin puddles evaporating in front of his eyes. And yet, the cold fact is, anybody could find an oasis or two. Maybe not as quick as he could, but they'd find it. And oases were only useful if they're properly managed. So, while he would be uselessly weak for a couple of days after every scouting mission--so much so that he needed to be waited hand and foot by his already withering pages--Alexander worked tirelessly with the other generals, captains, and Bagoas, to make sure that the company was well-watered.  
  
As for supplies? What a laugh that was. After a string of scouting failures he had been forced to start slaughtering healthy mules and transport horses, breaking down carts and wagons into firewood and makeshift shelter. That's not the half of it, and all of which would've gotten him into trouble any other time. Thankfully Alexander turned a blind eye. He had appraised all the animals, grains, and fuel in the train, apportioning them as well he could to sustain them as long as possible. But it was his skeleton-like quartermasters who enforced the rationing and it was Alexander who stopped any quarrel over meager rations.  
  
In the end, his careful calculation had come to naught anyway, when the wadi they had been camped in was suddenly washed down by a mighty flood that came down from the storm-hit rock mountains that stood like heartless sentry around the desert.  
  
They lost so many people to those roaring waters. Gone too were the animals and much of the supply wagons, leaving them with naught much else but the clothes on their backs and their lives on a string. He himself had swallowed so much water and sand, and the child he had been trying to save had drowned anyway, so he been uselessly there, too.  
  
And their return to safety and civilization? True enough that it was his star chart they had used to find the sea again. But it had been a gift from Nearchus, and some old seadog had adjusted it enough to suit the desert terrain. He couldn't even claim the honor of finding this valuable man. He remembered the time that sailor had come to him, some days after the flood.  
  
All the survivors had been waiting for the night to arrive, so they could move again. Hephaistion had been too wrapped up in his morbid fascination of the setting sun, when a man approached him. "Even after all this time, it's still beautiful, isn't it? The desert, I mean," the man had said to him, as a way of greeting. "At night, I could almost imagine myself being at sea, surrounded by waves of sand, and my own sweat into the salt of a starboard breeze."  
  
"You were with Nearchus, then, originally?"  
  
"I would be steering one of his ships even now, if I hadn't found love among Alexander's train," he had replied. Hephaistion could see a recent bruise of anguish around the man's eyes, sorrow in the deep creases around his mouth.  
  
"And you lost this love?" Was it to the heat, or to hunger, Hephaistion wondered. No. "In the wadi flood."  
  
The man had only nodded, sharp and painfully honest. Alexander had chosen the wadi for its shade. By the time they noticed a storm brewing over the mountains beyond, by the time they realized that heavy rainclouds would send them the kind of water they did not pray for, it was too late.  
  
If the man had approached him to pour out his anger, Hephaistion would gladly accept it. He was Alexander's lead surveyor. He should've said something about the wadi, but didn't. Much like he should have said something more to dissuade Alexander against the Gedrosian march, but didn't. Nobody had said it to his face, but he knew those deaths had been his fault.  
  
But the man had not reproached him, or given him blows. Instead, the man had said, "It would be nice to have a star chart. I could lead us to a harbor." The skies had gone dark then, and in a moonless night, the stars came out in abundance. It was like the whole heavens had opened up to him, giving him another chance--perhaps the last chance--for him to atone himself.  
  
It was then that he remembered a stack of sea- and star-charts that Nearchus had given him as a gag gift. He couldn't remember what the occasion was, but he had it with all his other maps. He never found the time nor the desire to ask Nearchus how he should read it, and he hadn't even remembered about it until now.  
  
For the next few nights, the two men and Alexander's remaining navigators reworked the maps and charts to plot out their landbound sail. Hephaistion had approached this task like a supplicant seeking divine forgiveness.  
  
They had spent only a small handful of nights and the moon barely found its slightest shape. But it felt as though they had wasted too much time. Once completed, they had hastened to Alexander and disturbed him from his task. While able navigators and the wise sailor worked to convince Alexander to approve what would be the last leg of their desert journey, Hephaistion had left with his men to seek out more water. They almost didn't make it back.  
  
Alexander used the map well enough to find the lip of the sea, navigating his way through shifting sands and uniform terrain as though he had been a sailor all his life. How proud he was then. Every step of the way, Bagoas had been there to attend to Alexander through his last frantic bid to find civilization once again. Meanwhile, Hephaistion had been at his most useless, at times even holding back Alexander's march with his delirium and fever.  
  
Belatedly, he realized he hadn't even asked the sailor his name, and nobody could find him to this day. Thus even in this, Hephaistion had been denied his chance to do right by this man.  
  
So, in hindsight, he felt odd to hear such acknowledgement from Craterus of all people. Everything he did in that desert only amounted to a string of lost chances or outright failures. He had proof of his shortcomings, on his writing desk in his room. It seemed that all he had been doing these past days or even weeks of convalescence, was to write letters of regret, begging for forgiveness, arranging for money owed and keepsakes held to be sent to the families of the people who had perished in their scorching march.  
  
His inadequate penance. Those were lost souls whom he couldn't even build a pyre for; men, women, and children he had cursed into shades, forever haunting the unforgiving desert.  
  
He examined Craterus's profile again, the sharp slope of his brows and the disapproving creases around his lips, as he watched a group of native girls dancing with members of Alexander's army. Hephaistion supposed that given the choice, his fellow general would rather praise a Macedonian dog than a Persian savior.  
  
"It's necessary," he told Craterus. He should find a way to speak terms that Craterus would be able to comprehend, yet he found no patience to string up such words. So he spoke as though to convince himself. "Alexander plans to make him seneschal, to manage his eastern palaces. For that to work, Bagoas needs to be an equal. It's the only way. Tonight is just something to show it."  
  
"You're not bothered by it, then," came the retort, nodding not so discreetly at the eunuch sitting on the chair next to the king's. Smiling. Holding hands.  
  
"Why should I?" Hephaistion replied, perhaps more sharply than he had intended. "If anything I feel sorry for him. His duties as seneschal will take him away from Alexander's side. He will have responsibility to his subordinates, for one. The average Persian household is a bloated bureaucracy. The palace even more so. Alexander wants a review of every soul serving in those palaces." He wondered who he was trying to convince.  
  
"Further, Alexander wants to give him a small household, as a token of gratitude. You know, servants, pages, mistresses, the like. Those would take up more of his time too." Hephaistion realized that Craterus was looking at him strangely, as though he was speaking in some foreign dialect. Hephaistion tsked loudly and marched on. "Don't worry so much; all will be Persian. That's not even the worse of it. Already he is asked to choose his replacement. Even I didn't have to do that." Because Alexander's tokens could be unintentionally painful, his love could be poison. The gentlest kind, but poison still.  
  
"No, Alexander decided it for the both of you," Craterus had been there, else his spies had been--in the harems, in Zadracarta, and then everywhere else on campaign. He had heard, seen, felt things they never expected him to. He hadn't been so taken by the wild barbaric beauty of Alexander's conquests to not notice the shifting of the tide.  
  
"I never complained," came a defiant response, only to receive a bark of laughter in return. Craterus mock-saluted his fellow general with a tip of his cup, and drank passable wine in one breath. Truly, he could not wait to return to Macedon.  
  
"Never said you did," Craterus returned, as he carelessly let the empty wine cup fall onto the floor. A short pause. "I fear our good king is not so wise to entrust this job to a bloody eunuch." The new staff of the Alexander's four eastern palaces would all be loyal to Alexander, but they would also be loyal to Bagoas. And from there, the sphere of influence would expand to include nearby satrapies if not further.  
  
Hephaistion saw Craterus's face souring and knew what Craterus was thinking. They had all heard about the other Bagoas, the kingmaker eunuch who had given Darius his throne. But Alexander was not the coward Darius, whom he had vanquished. And Alexander needed neither kingmaker nor a bloodthirsty eunuch to give and keep him a throne.  
  
"If you can't trust him, won't trust him, then trust Alexander," Hephaistion said finally.  
  
Craterus bestowed him with a strange look, a gaze made even more undecipherable by the constantly moving shadows made by the open torches around them.  
  
"Trust Alexander," Craterus echoed him, but said nothing more. After the disastrous-for-their-standards Indian campaign, the Mallian sortie, and the hare-brained desert march scheme, Craterus would sooner be wondering about the wisdom of trusting Alexander in his current state of mind. Already, words like "integration" and "assimilation" hung like a threat on the horizon. For a string of letters, the words sounded very dirty. He spat onto the ground next to Hephaistion's feet.  
  
Nothing happened, the world did not end. Wonders never cease.  
  
So, anyway. After the initial "we're going home" speech, which was as abstract as it could be, Alexander had gone quiet about it, as though he had forgotten about it. Bloody typical of the King to drag his feet about making an official edict to say exactly when and how this "going home thing" could be achieved.  
  
True, Alexander had spoke to him privately, about sending him back to Macedon to relieve Antipater. Which was another way of saying that Olympias needed a new patsy to bully back in Pella. Alexander had hinted broadly about who'd be coming with him back West, and what he should do along the way. He also knew that Hephaistion, Perdiccas, and Nearchus had already drawn up possible routes up to the East-West border, but Alexander had yet to decide on any. They didn't even have a time frame. He didn't have any solid thing to cling to. "Soon," the King had said, in a good imitation of an Oracle.  
  
He waited everyday, bit his tongue and sat on his hands even though he itched to tell his troops. Maybe Alexander was waiting for Craterus to change his mind about this integration nonsense. Or maybe there's a bigger, costlier surprise waiting to be sprung up on him. Alexander did so like to punish people who dared go against his ideas.  
  
Yet, there's no way Craterus could voice his disapproval without the threat of treason looming over his head. Remember Macedon, Craterus told himself. It had become his mantra as of late. Along with 'soon'.  
  
He watched Hephaistion watching Alexander throwing encouragements at a troupe of painted firebreathers. He noticed that Roxana had abandoned her position, all her ladies-in-waiting missing from the scene. Pity, there was one who wasn't so bad-looking.  
  
Bells trilled, and drums were struck. A troupe of dancing monkeys came into view riding little wooden horses. There were also little trees, replica mountains and tiny huts on three-spoked wheels. A whip-wielding boy, almost no taller than the monkeys, orchestrated a complicated maneuver of chained monkeys.  
  
Craterus saw Alexander looking at him with a smile on his wine-stained mouth, but quickly realized that the smile wasn't for him; it was for the politely grinning general next to him. Then Alexander seemed to realize who it was exactly that stood beside Hephaistion. The smile soured in an instant. A look of warning conveyed itself clearly across this wide space full of people.  
  
Alexander had been too prickly lately; no doubt, he would become more intractable with time. He would not let anyone challenge him. He already had four Persian satraps and three garrison generals summoned to Carmania, only for them to be tried for maladministration and corruption, coming up short of treason. All of them had been executed, even the brother of Coenus, whom Alexander had held in high esteem.  
  
Craterus had no doubt that many more would come under Alexander's unyielding scrutiny and be found wanting, executed as Alexander marched through his vast holdings. Because it was unthinkable for Alexander to give anyone that kind of power. Unless that person was named Hephaistion, who seemed uninterested with it all anyway, the idiot dog.  
  
"All the odds falling in your favor then, funny that," Craterus said instead, punctuating his words with a mirthless laugh. He sharply pat Hephaistion on the back, let his palm linger a second too long on a forearm. He felt Alexander's gaze on his back as he went on his merry way.  
  
"Yes, funny that," Hephaistion whispered to no one. He wondered why there's still a heaviness on his heart.

* * *

  
  
He's not exactly sure how he managed to find his own bed, though he did remember that the journey back to his rooms had been a solitary one. Shifting slightly to relieve a dead arm, he realized someone must've rearranged him sometime during the night, as it now felt like he's sleeping while hugging a brazier. He cracked one eye open and found a mop of golden hair under his nose, an arm across his waist, and Alexander's moist breath over his heart.  
  
Resting his chin on the crown of Alexander's head, he smiled. The son of Zeus, Hephaistion chuckled inwardly, more like the son of Helios. Alexander was always warm, which Hephaistion had come to appreciate during their cold nights together. Something that he hadn't realized he missed.  
  
Perhaps he had clutched too hard, or shifted too quickly, but his movements managed to disturb Alexander, who became wide awake in seconds. This was, sometimes, an endearing quirk of his, to be awake in an instant, to not care for indolence.  
  
"I was worried," Alexander said in lieu of a greeting, again efficiently reorganizing their positions, so that Hephaistion could now listen to his lover's steady heart drumming a beat against one cheek.  
  
"Worried. Why?" trapped in the haze of sleep, he couldn't remember doing anything that would cause worry. He burrowed closer, as though he wanted to get under Alexander's skin. Inhaling sharply, he recognized Roxana's jasmines and Bagoas's sandalwood underneath Alexander's unmistakable musk. This blend of scents had been part of Alexander's greater identity for a while now. Hephaistion wondered, now and again, where his was. Come to think of it, what was his scent anyway? He wasn't about to sniff himself, however. Was his scent strong enough or harmonious enough to work with the rest?  
  
"You and Craterus," Alexander said, as though it explained anything.  
  
"Oh," he said. And after a while, "Why?" He lapped at a nipple, grazed it with his teeth, smiled when Alexander groaned.  
  
"Two of you were... hmm... talking."  
  
"Oh that. Yes, we were. Don't worry. We can be civil you know." He didn't mean to sound indignant, but his speech came out like a whine. He cringed. "And we're not up to anything behind your back." There would not be any sudden alliance between them, ever. In that he was certain.  
  
"I know," Alexander quickly said, running a soothing hand across a tense back. "I mean, you could make friends with the enemy, even ones who don't speak our language... Your temper has mellowed with age, too. So, what happened in India didn't make any sense to me. You don't understand how alarmed I was then." And when Alexander was alarmed, he tended to lash out.  
  
Hephaistion was never overtly hotheaded or excessively reckless, despite what everyone thought. Yet he was intensely devoted and one of the most internally motivated person Alexander had ever known. He'd antagonized anyone and anything if he had to, which oddly enough had made him into the ruthless administrator he was.  
  
Sometimes, when he remembered it, he would thank the gods that Hephaistion was not at the other side of the enemy line. Oh and how it did untold wonders to his ego to be the recipient of Hephaistion's brand of manic faith and be the reason for his motivations. Like when he defended Alexander against King Philip. Like when he charged at Attalus for his slander toward Alexander. Like when he almost cut down Craterus for scoffing Alexander's Persian policies. Alexander would be sometimes angry--at Hephaistion for putting himself in harm's way for him, at the world for encouraging it, and if he were honest, at himself for taking some pleasure from it.  
  
"Maybe it's because we've known each other for so long, Craterus and I. We know how to goad effectively. And then there was that wretched Indian weather and too much wine," Hephaistion mulled over, it sounded like a lame excuse even to his ears.  
  
"I.. Have I apologized for what I said?"  
  
Hephaistion wondered why Alexander chose today of all days to discuss that particular issue. They had been doing quite well ignoring it until now. Had they suddenly run out of rugs and nobody told him? He could've requisitioned some and had them delivered by tomorrow.  
  
In any case, they're so far removed from India, anyway. They had faced much worse circumstances, hadn't they? Even he could see the quarrel to be a trifling one... in the long run. "More than once. Alexander, I never needed your apology. I told you this."  
  
"Yes," Alexander said, almost inaudibly. "More than once, as well." At times, Alexander's desire for forgiveness was matched only by Hephaistion's need to act as if nothing happened.  
  
His fingers moved across Hephaistion's back, drawing glyphs that read like apology across heated skin. It tickled, more than anything. "But you looked so sad that time, and so pale. That scared me the most, I think. You looked so pale and so furious I thought you might die. It frightened me more than you can possibly imagine."  
  
"I wasn't angry at you. Not when I recognized the truth in it." Hephaistion prayed that Alexander would drop it. This was hardly pillow talk. Why, he wondered, should they revisit something he'd rather put behind him?  
  
"No! Where is the truth in it? There's no truth in it! Even I didn't believe it, I still don't! You were right to be angry at me. Of all the things I could've said, Hephaistion..."  
  
"Stop, Alexander," he soothed, as he would a restless filly. More than anything, he hated to see his king remorseful and defeated. In his mind's eye, Alexander should always be bright and proud. "Here, listen to me." All traces of sleep fled from Hephaistion then. Only an uneasy wakefulness left behind. And beneath it, an ember of despair being set alight.  
  
Most of the torches in the room had expired overnight, and the moon wasn't so ripe as to provide adequate light. But Hephaistion welcomed the relative darkness nevertheless. Else, in the light, he would not have the courage he needed.  
  
This was his own private fear, which he never wanted to give voice to. But some lock had broke inside him and he couldn't stop. Didn't want to stop. Perhaps it was Bagoas, who had expressed his fears and doubts so freely under the fullness of the sun, a luxury that Hephaistion envied and could never have. Perhaps Craterus's wine had loosened him. Either way, he would regret it later, but his mouth was already running away with his words. He whispered urgently against Alexander's lips. If he didn't say it loud enough, he could dismiss it as delirium.  
  
"You were right to say that I was furious," he breathed against Alexander's skin. He sensed that Alexander was about to speak, so he reached up and sought out a kiss. He swallowed his king's words with it.  
  
"But I wasn't angry at you. It was only at myself. I had avoided rationalizing it for so long, hid it behind misguided animosity... I know now that I was angry at myself." He clambered onto his knees, anchoring them along Alexander's sides. Arms outstretched, he leaned in for another protracted kiss, stealing a second for his thoughts.  
  
"I've followed you for so long, made your dream mine for so long. It dawned to me then, that night." He held onto Alexander's upper arms tightly that it took Alexander quite a bit of effort to sit up.  
  
"If you were to suddenly tell me to go, I wouldn't know where to go. If you were to suddenly tell me you have no more need of me, I wouldn't know what to do." If only Alexander could taste his desperation, then perhaps he could help him understand what he himself could not.  
  
"I would flounder. That's what's going to happen. Well, maybe after being sad for a while, I'd find my feet again. But where would I be? When would that be? A while. How long is a while? What if I die before I can find myself again? That's what I've been thinking." Hephaistion spoke harshly, tucking his head underneath Alexander's chin as he nipped and sucked against the tender skin at the juncture of his throat and neck. Teeth scraped against collarbone. "My Alexander." An open-mouthed kiss against his scar from Malli. "Are you still mine? You who are so dear to me."  
  
Hephaistion wrapped his fingers bruisingly around Alexander's upper arms, as though to reassure himself that his lover was not a mere mirage.  
  
"Even if you were to suddenly throw me away, I'd still follow you. Against all common sense, against all orders. I'll be a foot soldier, or a camp follower. A dog. Or a slavering beast. Cut off my legs and I will leave a trail of blood to be with you. Spear my heart, leave me to the crows and my soul will wander across the earth to follow you. Maybe I was furious because I didn't like how empty that made me feel. Why should I pine away like Echo if ever you have no more need of me. I would. I will. A thousand times over, and the answer will still be the same. But why do I want that, Alexander?"  
  
Hephaistion's voice never rose above harsh whispers that the windows would betray, never devolved into hystericisms that the walls could advertise. It was their own private anguish; theirs and no one else. His voice felt like open wounds against Alexander's throat. It hurt to breathe, to speak. Only harsh exhalations and racing heartbeat.  
  
"I've let your dreams consume me, my every thought, my every waking moment. Why? When did it start?" Alexander longed to touch, more than just a reassuring grip he managed to get around Hephaistion's taut forearms. "There used to be a time when I had a dream that was mine. It's not big, but it was mine. But if you ask me now what it was, I wouldn't know it. I doubt I'd recognize it even if it were to conjure itself in front of me. It has been such a long time since I last thought of it." Eyes wild, blazing, anguished looked up at him, held his gaze like none others could. "Maybe I never did."  
  
Alexander wished, not for the first time, that he had the wherewithal to soothe the turmoil in his lover's soul. He had no idea. He was a fool. He had no idea that such anguish could exist, along with such madness. How long had such storms been brewing inside Hephaistion's mind?  
  
"For a long time now, I haven't anything of my own outside of you. My Alexander, my king. But now, you're going to give me a family. A wife of my own. Children of my own. A palace of my own. What do I do with them, Alexander?" A desperate caress against the side of his neck, his chest, hovering above his heart, his stomach. He had seen it, people who died in the desert. For drinking too much after going thirsty for so long.  
  
Their heads hung close together, sharing space, sharing breath. Yet, never had he felt so alone. "Why, Alexander?"  
  
Struck dumb, Alexander became suddenly and mortally afraid of the wraith that had taken the form of his friend. Where did I lose you? He wanted to ask.  
  
"I thought... I was making it up to you. Finally do something right by you," Alexander whispered urgently. In front of him, Hephaistion was a wounded beast, though his eyes remained dry. If there were tears, Alexander would know what to do. But in its absence, he found himself lost as well.  
  
It scared him more than he could admit in the dark, this Hephaistion before him--a stranger he didn't recognize. Robbed of self-belief. A doubter, unsure of his footing. Where had he gone, the Hephaistion he knew? Who had always been so self-assured. Who knew the secrets of the world. Who held all the answers in his heart. Who had walked beside Alexander and inspired jealousy among his fellow generals.  
  
Not here, Alexander thought, dread wrapping around his soul. Not in this defeated man in front of him. Striking pale, broken and beyond beautiful still. Alexander's blood thrummed. Hephaistion was his greatest conquest. His mind sung. It was a dirge.  
  
"I only want to give it to you. What you're owed a thousand times over," Alexander added, desperate now. "I thought it will make you happy. You were so sad. I couldn't bear it." They had drifted so far apart, through both their follies. He had sincerely thought that he could make amends.  
  
"It is never to send you away. Tell me you believe me." He wouldn't know what to do if Hephaistion didn't. "Tell me what you want, and I swear by the gods, I will give it to you."  
  
He had dreamed about it when they survived the desert--overtures and new beginnings. In his head, they were wondrous spectacles: horse rides at dawn in Babylon, his empire laid out before them. He would tie the Greeks and Persians by blood and by law. Already he could imagine his and Hephaistion's children--cousins to one another--running underfoot. Hephaistion and his architects would build him a magnificent palace at Persepolis, while he himself would be as Hammurabi, laying down lasting laws with Platonic wisdom.  
  
Then once he had strengthened his center and his love, he would ride out to Arabia with Hephaistion by his side. They would return triumphant and he would lay gold at Hephaistion's feet. Or perhaps they would not go to Arabia at all; Hephaistion had no love for sandy vistas nowadays. Back West, then, and all the way to the Pillars of Hercules. Hephaistion had wished to see the Mediterranean again, and Alexander would see to it that he could. He would do everything right this time around, and all of it would be amazing. Now they tasted like bile. Had they changed so much that he had misread his own heart?  
  
"Tell me, Hephaistion," he was not so above begging now.  
  
Hephaistion only looked at him as though deaf. Bright eyes searching for something on Alexander's face. Then, he leaned in suddenly. Brushing his lips on Alexander's forehead. A kiss on each eyelid. A whisper on his lips. Like benediction.  
  
What are you praying for? Alexander wanted to ask.  
  
Then Hephaistion sat back suddenly, flexing his fingers that had formed claws around Alexander's upper arms. It laid carelessly across bare thighs now.  
  
After a few spans of breath, long and even, his eyes sought Alexander's again.  
  
"I know you'll still want it, but should it be made known so soon? There's no telling how your men will react to this Persian marriage plan. Neither will Roxana take it lying down. For different reasons. But all the same, they'll not understand." He sighed and touched a small scar across Alexander's eyebrow. "I don't think they can be made to understand."  
  
Alexander blinked owlishly, mouth hanging open stupidly. It was like his body had been emptied out of all air. Still smarting from the grip of Hephaistion's emotional blows, Alexander had not expected this conversation. Like a whiplash victim, he panted, breathless and disoriented.  
  
"Alexander," Hephaistion called out urgently. "Are you even listening?" It was louder than a whisper. Steady as anything, as though they had been discussing this very thing all night long.  
  
Such was Hephaistion, then. Alexander had forgotten how fatally he could both inflict and take a wound with a single shifting thought, then to as quickly stitch, suture, and cauterize. By the time it took to take another breath, he would already be walking away as if nothing had happened.  
  
He remembered Aristotle talking about frogponds. The world will be your frogpond, he had said. Alexander laughed inwardly, grimacing as he did. There's not nearly enough lily pads in the world that could satisfy Hephaistion's leaps of moods and thoughts.  
  
*****  
  
So instead of answering, Alexander had drawn Hephaistion down for a kiss and a light touch. The sun would be up soon, but there's still enough time for them to indulge in a slow rediscovery of each other. It seemed as though words and deeds could no longer bridge the gulf between them. But sex was sex, and it was what they knew to do. It would be a start.  
  
Clumsy kisses as though they were still young pages in abandoned hallways. Stolen touches as though they were back at the edge of a pier trying to fish and failing spectacularly at it. Lofty words whispered as they might have done on their camp bed before their first battle.  
  
In the dark, they could always pretend. They could avoid seeing the scars that they deftly avoided to touch, such was their knowledge of each other's skin. They could forget about hard-won callouses and cords of spasming muscle; instead they would whisper marvels at the softness of the inner thigh.  
  
Darkness before dawn hid the ghosts that were behind their eyes. It obscured all knowledge except the one they had of each other's body. How they still fit so well together, after all this time, despite everything. How each could take only and exactly what the other could give. As though restraint was currency, and 'enough' still had meaning. As though the innocence that they had shed too long ago now, was worth something still.  
  
And when Alexander finally succumbed to another bout of sleepiness, Hephaistion laid awake, counting his king's breath.  
  
"Shed your crown, Great King," he whispered, "let us be away," when he thought Alexander was already asleep. Alexander had asked him what he wanted. Then he laughed at his own maudlin words and impossible dreams. Even if every single star were to fall down from the skies for him to wish upon, he would still be Sisyphus.  
  
His king slept on. Quietly, softly, a balm to his own battered soul.  
  
He thought back to his little non-conversation with Craterus, the one about changes. Now all he wanted was to see Craterus's face when the general learned that Alexander's sending him back to Macedon with a Persian wife in tow. Now wouldn't that be a laugh and a half? Poor Craterus, he thought. And yet, fortunate Craterus, who would see the Aegean waters again.   
  
Running an idle finger up and down the middle of Alexander's chest, he hummed to himself. A tuneless thing that soothed his mind. He thought he had grown out of this habit, but he had been humming to himself more often lately.  
  
Alexander had the mind to make this marriage announcement before the week was up. Last night's public display with Bagoas had been Alexander's way of testing the waters. But how to make Alexander see that accepting an equal in a eunuch who had saved their lives, was a world apart from accepting a barbarian wife of their own. That particular eunuch they would rarely see; these would-be wives they would have to take into their homes. Come to think of it, they hadn't even accepted Roxana's queenship, not really, not even after all the hardships she had shared with them on Alexander's campaigns.  
  
But an Alexander trapped within a lofty dream could not be made to see reason.  
  
Already, missives were coming in daily from Susa and Babylon, with a list of noble Persian families offering their daughters' hands in marriage. Sometimes, Alexander would ask for matchmaking opinions, make him read those missives, long-winding letters from hopeful fathers and status-chasing noblemen. They wrote about their daughters' virtues in much the same language as a horsebreaker would talk to him about mares. Only difference, you can take a mare to the battlefield. Hephaistion worried that this whole thing would just be a repeat of the rape of Babylon. Only this time, with the additional yoke of marriage.  
  
He exhaled noisily, not caring now if he disturbed Alexander's sleep.  
  
All things change, for better or worse. He couldn't speak for everyone. Oh enough about other people, he grumbled to himself. Alexander was supposed to be the bleeding heart between them.  
  
Himself? He was used to it by now, catering to Alexander's every whim, at any cost. He should be used to it, by hook or by crook. He would accept it and change again, he knew. Because it was for Alexander. Not any empire, not any god, none other. If that made him pathetic, then he would learn to accept it, too.  
  
The leaves on the trees outside his room were set ablaze as a red sun rose up in the horizon, like phoenix fire.  
  
Red sky at dawn, he thought sadly. Perhaps he had been blooded one too many times, reborn once too often. Maybe this would be his last.  
  
*****  
  
**.coda.**  
  
The sun had a way to bleach out night terrors, make them insignificant or hide them among shadows.  
  
Alexander yawned and opened his eyes, then smiled as he caught his lover watching him.  
  
Hephaistion returned it with a dazzling one of his own, glad that Alexander had not seen the red dawn rising.  
  
He rolled on top of Alexander who watched his every move with rapture in his eyes.  
  
One last time then, in the brightness of day. Hephaistion thought of glory as he claimed a fierce kiss. One last time to fan the flames of his passion. Before learning, once again, to let go.  
  
  


 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "Great Men From Unhealthy Ground" is from _In the Days of Jupiter_ by Lights Out Asia ([full tracks](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PewKLkbKfu8))
> 
>  
> 
> Supposedly, they arrived in Carmania in the Winter. But for this, imagine it to be in the Fall, because these following two motifs are what inspired me:
> 
>  
> 
> "[Herbsttag (Autumn Day)](http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/rilke/rilke4.html)" by Rainer Maria Rilke
> 
> Lord, it is time. Let the great summer go,  
> Lay your long shadows on the sundials,  
> And over harvest piles let the winds blow.
> 
> Command the last fruits to be ripe;  
> Grant them some other southern hour,  
> Urge them to completion, and with power  
> Drive final sweetness to the heavy grape.
> 
> Who's homeless now, will for long stay alone.  
> No home will his weary hands build,  
> He'll wake, read, write letters long to friends  
> And will the alleys up and down  
> Walk restlessly, when falling leaves dance.
> 
>  
> 
> "[Herbst (Fall)](http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/rilke/rilke8.html)" by Rainer Maria Rilke
> 
> The leaves are falling, falling as from far  
> Wilted in distant gardens of the sky  
> Unwillingly and protesting, they fall.
> 
> And in the nights the heavy Earth is falling  
> into solitude from star to star
> 
> We all are rushing down. This hand, too, is falling  
> The others too: it's in all their calling
> 
> And yet, there is One who holds this fall  
> with endless gentleness in both his hands.


End file.
